Shoreline Entrepreneur Sends Technology to Outer Space with SBIR Funding
New products and technologies often receive hyperbolic acclaim, but Dr. Chris Own, founder and CEO of Seattle-based Voxa can truly say his are “out of this world.”
Chris founded Voxa in 2012 with a mission to miniaturize the electron microscope to increase its range of applications and functionality, and to democratize access to the technology and data produced. Moving from Silicon Valley following the dissolution of a tech startup where he worked as a designer and engineer, Chris moved his equipment and team to the Seattle area where they rented a home and launched Voxa working out of their garage.
When the company rolled out their first production model of a miniature electron microscope in 2015, it was the first of its kind. Compared to existing products that cost millions of dollars to purchase and required special facilities and infrastructure, their new microscope, named “Mochii,” was about the size of a toaster and could be taken practically anywhere. With Mochii, rather than bringing samples back to a microscope in a lab facility, the microscope could travel to a chosen site and send data anywhere in real time. The new product soon caught the attention of NASA scientists who were excited about the portability of the technology and its ability to analyze both the identity and the locations of chemical elements within the tiny nanoscale structures it was scanning.
Securing funding to continue the development of the technology was challenging. Through a grant award from the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, Chris and his team were able to further develop their Mochii microscope for use by NASA. In February of 2020, the Voxa microscope was approved for a space-bound mission and used by astronauts aboard the International Space Station, where it continues to be used for research as an orbital facility in the ISS National Laboratory.
Since the inaugural launch, Voxa has been growing here at home and abroad. While headquartered in Seattle, the company has expanded with an office in Japan to meet their growing demand worldwide in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Despite the increases in their product line, revenue, and employees, Chris chooses to measure success in how well they are meeting their mission. While the Mochii microscope will likely be taken to the moon and to Mars, Chris is also excited to see it utilized by a variety of users, including high school and university classrooms, to help further the scientific pursuits of students and scientists around the world.